Zunealicious

I admit it, I bought a Zune. I've been anythingbutipod.com since the beginning, and I'm happy to report that the Zune isn't falling short of my expectations. It does everything that my buddy's iPod does, and then adds a couple of things like wireless music sharing and a radio tuner. Not bad for a first try, I have to say. I also have a few friends who are part of the phase 2 beta, and I know that there are more good things coming in future updates to the firmware. 48 hours into it, I"m still not having my classic that-was-a-stupid-impulsive-buying-decision. Good on me. One thing I really like is the subscription type agreement they offer instead of the buy-only choice with iTunes. It allows for a nice try-before-you-buy, and the bitrate is 192kbps on your downloaded stuff, which doesn't sound half bad. Not that I would actually buy music online (I only buy CDs), unless they offered lossless quality. I'm such a whore for hifi. Even though I probably don't need it. Oh well, someone's gotta be the idiot so the rest of the world can feel good about themselves. I am proud to serve you all.

Final thought: If you, like me, have been looking for an iPod but never felt quite comfortable with the glossy little thing, buy a Zune. It's an iPod with a couple of more features, and the radio, incidently, is a nice one of those extras.

Update: No, I have not seen any podscasts, nor does the software appear to have any kind of support for RSS feeds. I've never had the podcast subscription stuff so I don't know what I'm missing, but it seems that that might be a downer if you're looking to switch from the iPod (the podcast subscription feature does seem kind of nice). Also, I've had zero problems with the device itself or the software crashing. Then again, I never have problems with bluescreens or any other real problems with Windows in general so I'm not entirely surprised. There seems to be some big irony around this thing... if you work in software development, you rarely run into problems with your own system, but everyone else's seems to fail all the time just so that you can be there and fix it. Odd indeed.